Aries
Well
known for simple, straightforward action (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger), in “12
Rounds” director Renny Harlin does it again: Young cop Danny Fisher is
forced into a dangerous race for his girlfriend’s life, when a criminal
whom he once caught is out for vengeance blaming Fisher for the death of his
girlfriend in the chase. With a twisted appetite for competition he stages
a wicked game, in which the cop has to confront twelve challenges and the stakes
are high for everybody involved – „if you’re still standing
after 12 rounds you’ve won her back“.

Taurus
Ten years back a peaceful and quaint little town provided the setting for
a cannibalistic massacre between trapped miners and more brutal murders.
Now the horror returns when a young man, who as a teenager was one of the
survivors, visits his hometown on Valentine’s Day. Although „My
Bloody Valentine 3D“ seems to convey the feeling of Scorpionic terror,
fans of the slasher genre – the original “My Bloody Valentine” from
1981 being a genre classic – will probably thoroughly enjoy and relish
the slaughter-scenes enacted with sensuous pleasure, thus emphasizing the
Taurus-side of the axis.

Gemini„One
fabulous game of Trivial Pursuit“ leading man Tom Hanks called “Angels & Demons”,
the second adaptation of a Dan Brown bestseller, accurately describing
the tone of this roughly cut story about murdering cardinals and an old
mysterious organization of enlightened artists and scholars, about physics,
a dangerous new technology and the age-old feud between science and church,
which points us to the Gemini-Sagittarius-axis with its conflict between
the pure accumulation of information and the claim of meaningful knowledge.
The bustling gathering and hectic decipherment of signs and symbols, which
is the protagonists’ main preoccupation and giving the movie the
feel of a scavenger hunt, is emphasizing Gemini-energy.

Cancer“The Uninvited” is a “family film” of a special,
Scorpio sort, a kind of modern fairy tale about an evil stepmother – and
thus mainly a Cancer-movie. The mother of two teenage girls died and
when the younger one, who was under psychiatric treatment after the loss
of her mum, returns from the hospital, hoping for a secure and caring
family life, she has to confront not only spooky apparitions but also
the mother’s former nurse, who in the meantime married the girls’ father.
A brutal fight ensues between the girls and their hard, relentless and
ambitious Capricorn-antagonist…

LeoMovies
about music or about people devoted to music almost always have a strong
Leo-quality since music and dancing have always been a basic means of
expressing oneself and one’s feelings from exuberant joy to deepest
grief. The documentary “El último aplauso” (“The
last applause”) is not a glamorous film but it captures exactly
this role music has, and it offers us the opportunity to share what that
instrument of self-expression means for a group of Tango-singers in Buenos
Aires. Once more they want to perform for the audience of their former
workplace, Argentina’s most famous Tango-bar “Bar El Chino” and
evoke the glory of days past.

VirgoIn “Die
wunderbare Welt der Waschkraft” (“The fabulous world of washing
efficiency“) again a film deals with the Virgo-motif of washing and
cleaning, though this time the documenting glance focuses as well on the
individual stories of the Polish washwomen as on the complex economic relations
between German high-class hotels and Polish laundries.

The feature film “Sunshine Cleaning” is also about cleaning:
struggling with financial hardship a single mother and cleaning woman starts
a biohazard removal and crime scene clean-up business, in which, of course,
we find a Scorpio analogy (Pluto in Virgo would fit). But the Virgo-counterpart
of Pisces has an important part too: the project is also meant to help the
chaotic, drifting sister to hold a job and settle her life. So the quirky
and tragic comedy about the – futile? – efforts to lead a regular
and “perfect” everyday (work) life takes its course.

Libra
Once again Libra is represented by one of those typically easy-going and
stylish romantic comedies. “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past“ also
has some repressed emotions and Cancerian fairy-tale motifs like well-meaning
ghosts and further a seemingly inevitable Saturnian morality concerning
the basic Libra-art of truly getting involved with the “Other” (which
so far has been changed rapidly by the protagonist), which means learning
to appreciate its independent perspective, instead of solely using it – or
rather: them – as an aid to the own Ego. It’s the whole Cardinal
Cross (pun intended) – Libra-fulfillment drawing on Cancer and Capricorn
to replace Aries-egoism…

Scorpio„Last
House on the Left“ is another Scorpionic family film. This time though,
the Scorpio-quality is clearly emphasized, since it is all about the ability
for cruel and brutal vengefulness. After torturing two young girls and
almost killing both, three violent criminals and the leader’s teenage
son unknowingly seek refuge in the isolated vacation home of one of the
girls’ parents. When the severely injured and barely surviving girl
is found by her parents and they understand that they are housing the offenders,
the formerly harmless vacationers think of gruesome ways to let the criminals
bleed for their deeds.

Sagittarius
How a young hoodlum turns into the courageous captain of a space-ship exploring
new galaxies and how the voyages of the Enterprise could have begun, that
is the story“Star Trek”, the prequel to all Star Trek movies
and the TV show, tells us. Throughout various generations of “Star
Trek” horizons were widened and with tolerance and a thirst for knowledge
new worlds were discovered, but now we witness the first encounter between
combative Kirk and cool Vulcan Spock. Nevertheless Spock’s words
have always clearly pointed out the Enterprise’s Sagitterian mission: “These
are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her ongoing mission: to explore
strange new worlds, to seek out new life-forms and new civilizations; to
boldly go where no one has gone before.”

CapricornWith
bare and naturalistic cinematography “Boy A” tells the story
of a young man, who is striving to start anew after serving a 14-year
sentence for the murder of a little girl. The sentence is served, responsibility
and guilt are accepted, even some sort of redemption seems possible,
when he happens to save a little girl’s life. But this good deed
alerts the media of his past and thus endangers his own fragile, newly
built life. Social reintegration and responsibility, guilt and expiation
are the weighty Capricorn-issues this small film is dealing with.

Aquarius
At first glance a story about a patchwork-family in French working class milieu, “Ricky” turns
out to be a whimsical genre-mix and sort of a superhero-movie about being
different. A single mother and factory worker falls in love with a co-worker
and a child is born. When the baby shows inexplicable bruises, conflict is
programmed and the pair separates. Yet soon it turns out that Ricky was in
no way abused by his father, but that he is growing wings… A flying
baby in a contemporary satellite town? Francois Ozon’s unusual and odd
film shows us what this could look like.

PiscesWhen
a movie is titled “The Limits of Control” it seems quite obvious
to assume some Pisces-quality. When you can hardly tell what it is about,
when the images consistently appear dreamy and slightly surreal and throughout
the film you are wondering, if you’re following a fractured reality,
a dream or a trip through the collective unconscious, and when furthermore
sentences like “everything is imagined” are spoken, then the
assumption is confirmed. Aquarian Jim Jarmusch has been experimenting again
and with a notable ensemble (Tilda Swinton especially is fabulous!) a film
history’s mystery play full of spiritual truisms came to be, calling
for a revolution of perception (Uranus in Pisces!).

Vesna Ivkovic

Vesna
Ivkovic studied literature and linguistics, sociology, philosophy
and history and as well took a profound interest in psychology, mythology
and different belief systems. Along the way she also explored various
paths of body awareness such as the martial arts of Kung Fu, Dance,
Yoga, Qi Gong and several other methods of body work and motion arts.
In 1993 she discovered astrology as an instrument of knowledge and
graduated in 2004 in Markus Jehle's and Petra Niehaus' master class
at the Astrology Center Berlin. You can find out more about the author
and her work on her own website www.astrosemiotics.de

The Cinemascope is meant to give an overview of current movies and their main themes from an astrosemiotical perspective (i.e.: regarding film as semiotic system and translating it into the astrological semiotic system). A well made movie not only has a story and a certain theme, it also provides a special atmosphere, a certain feeling and it draws us into its very own world. This basic quality that is contrived through characters, plot, setting and many other components also translates into one or more astrological principles. Quite simply: a fast-paced action-flick confronts us with plain Aries energy, a horror-movie evokes Scorpio-like abysmal depths and fears etc. We step out of the theatre and – if the film succeeded in sucking us in – find ourselves dwelling on and engaging in that special energetic quality.

AstroWiki
by Astrodienst is a free encyclopedia of astrology. It collects the knowledge
of the astrological community and makes it available to everybody. The Wiki`s
cadre consists of two astrological lexica.

As one of the largest astrology portals WWW.ASTRO.COM offers a lot of free features on the subject. With high-quality horoscope interpretations by the world's leading astrologers Liz Greene, Robert Hand and other authors, many free horoscopes and extensive information on astrology for beginners and professionals, www.astro.com is the first address for astrology on the web.